Apple has been killing tablet ideas since 2003

Former employees have confirmed the existence of early prototypes from as far …

Though rumors constantly contend that Apple is very nearly ready to release tablet computing nirvana upon the masses, it turns out that the company has struggled to devise useful hardware and its killer application since 2003. The information comes courtesy of some former Apple employees who say that debates about how a tablet could benefit consumers for "quite some time."

A former Apple engineer involved heavily with the development of Apple's multitouch technology, Joshua A Strickon, recently told The New York Times that Apple had a PowerPC-based tablet prototype built in 2003, but that it sucked batteries dry in no time at all. "It couldn't be built," Stickon, named on several of Apple's multitouch patents, told the Times. "The battery life wasn't long enough, the graphics performance was not enough to do anything and the components themselves cost more than $500."

Further, Apple CEO Steve Jobs often criticized the under-powered prototypes, according to a former Apple executive that spoke to the Times. Confirming earlier rumors that he killed previous tablet attempts, Jobs reportedly asked what such tablets would be good for beyond "surfing the Web in the bathroom."

Though the explosion of over 85,000 apps available for the iPhone OS platform has provided answers to that question, it still doesn't explain what the truly killer feature of an iPhone-like tablet would be to drive consumers to spend a healthy chunk of change on such a device with neither the pocketable size of an iPhone or iPod touch nor the input options of a netbook or even MacBook or MacBook Air.

The question remains whether a larger, more expensive screen will truly entice consumers. Our feeling is that a larger screen alone won't be enough, and it seems plenty of folks inside of Apple have asked the same question. "I can imagine something like the iPhone with a much bigger screen being a gorgeous device with great capacity, but I don't know where I would fit that into my life," said yet another unnamed former Apple executive that spoke to the Times, who despite his misgivings still anticipates an Apple tablet next year. "Those are the debates that have been happening inside Apple for quite some time."